All posts tagged Bryant Park

Lauren Grace Williamson, left, ice dances with David Silver at the at Bryant Park rink.

Andrew Lamberson for The Wall Street Journal

Fans of ice dancing and formal attire got a chance to show off their ballroom skills on the ice this week. Attendees of the sixth annual Ice Ball, presented by The Simulacrum of Yore Society, skated in “Impressionist Formal” attire at the Bryant Park ice skating rink on Wednesday. Read More »

From left to right, Ed Rodriguez, Wallace Bass Boyd and Mark Ludwig at Bryant Park on Aug. 5.

Three-quarters of the way through his project, Mark Ludwig realized he had a problem.

The former restaurant manager picked up the six-inch pea-green blanket square he had been knitting and got up from his chair to look for help.

“It’s just a little dropped stitch, but we’re in the perfection business here, you’re trying to make a perfect square,” he explained.

Mr. Ludwig was one of some 70 people attending a Tuesday afternoon knitting session in Bryant Park, most of them women. But he is one of a small number of men who come out regularly, taking part in what has been viewed, at least in the modern era, as a mostly female pursuit.

The group, which is making blanket squares for charity and has its last session of the season on Tuesday, is presented by Knitty City, a yarn shop on the Upper West Side. The store hosts a weekly gathering of its own for men who knit and crochet. Read More »

UPDATED | A 16-year-old Bronx boy was ordered held without bail Tuesday after pleading not guilty to charges alleging he shot two people at Manhattan’s Bryant Park ice skating rink.

Cory Dunton has been charged with attempted murder, assault, criminal possession of a weapon and other counts in connection with the Nov. 9 shooting of two people — one of them a 14-year-old innocent bystander — during an 11 p.m. robbery. Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Renee White ordered that Mr. Dunton continued to be held without bail.

Prosecutor James Lin told the judge that the 14-year-old boy, who was struck with a stray bullet, remains hospitalized and “he has no movement below his waist,” Mr. Lin said Read More »

On Wednesday, thousands of people who has signed up to participate in the latest Diner en Blanc received the event’s trademark last-minute message: the location of the “chic picnic.” This time, it was in Bryant Park. Read More »

Peter Foley for the Wall Street

About 4,000 people participated in the latest Diner en Blanc in Bryant Park on Wednesday.

The Super Smash Brothers Melee setup in Bryant Park, with the carousel in the background.

Paulo Talion was reading a book in Bryant Park last month when he spotted a power outlet sticking out of the ground. He knew exactly what to do with it. ”I should bring a TV,” he thought. “And bring ‘Smash.’”

He was referring to Super Smash Brothers Melee, a popular and addictive Nintendo fighting game that includes characters from years past, like Mario from Super Mario Brothers and Link from The Legend of Zelda.

Mr. Talion, 23 years old, and many videogame enthusiasts have become accustomed to playing in dungeon-like settings: sterile computer centers, arcades pumped with artificial light. Mr. Talion was a member of Stony Brook University’s Animated Perspectives Club, which gathered often in a windowless student union basement on Long Island to play Smash. So, bringing the game and gamers to Bryant Park is nothing short of a utopia. Read More »

New Yorkers who don’t already have too many balls in the air show up for afternoon juggling lessons on the Fifth Avenue Terrace outside of the New York Public Library’s main branch. Above, Jordan Campbell of Bryant Park Juggling gives lessons on Thursday. Read More »

The documentary ‘March of the Penguins’ played outside at Bryant Park on Monday night, on the coldest day of the winter so far.

When Bryant Park’s film screening kicked off Monday night, the temperature stood at 17 degrees below freezing. And that was downright balmy compared to the low of 5 degrees measured earlier on the coldest day of the winter so far – not exactly an ideal night for an outdoor movie.

But the Arctic conditions did not deter a hardy handful of people who turned out to watch — appropriately enough — “March of the Penguins.”

“I used to come in the summer for the movies, but this is the first time during the winter,” said Jose Jimenez. Unlike the park’s summer movie festival, he said, “I don’t have to deal with crowds and there are plenty of seats available.”

Citi Pond’s Inaugural Winter Film Festival began last week with the screening of “Happy Feet.” The films are projected outside on a 900-square-foot inflatable screen that can be watched from the skating rink, Celsius restaurant and the surrounding areas of the park. Read More »

A mother feeds her child at a park in the Bronx. In New York, breastfeeding in public is protected by law.

A Manhattan mother was allegedly tossed out of a cafe near Bryant Park for breastfeeding her five-month-old child. The incident, which occurred a year ago, has predictably resulted in a lawsuit.

Court papers were filed Monday, according to the New York Post. (The tabloid’s take on the story lacks one of its signature witty headlines, but makes up for it with a droll lead: “Talk about lactose intolerance.”)

The mother, Julia Acevedo-Taylor, apparently visited Lily O’Brien’s Chocolate Cafe with her baby and a friend, another mother of a young child. Both women began breastfeeding at a table when, according to court papers cited by the Post, the manager came over and asked them to stop. Acevedo-Taylor and her friend refused. The manager then told them to leave and never come back, and the women tearfully departed with the kids.

The lawsuit seeks damages for the shame and humiliation Acevedo-Taylor experienced, and claims that the plaintiff has subsequently been unable to breastfeed in public as result of anxiety.

Of course, the facts of the case can be disputed in court. And perhaps some readers might consider it a frivolous lawsuit. But one thing is clear: public breastfeeding is a mother’s legal right in New York. Read More »

Anyone who has ever used the restroom at Max Fish knows that this city has its share of disgusting toilets. But the city contains multitudes, and apparently has two of the nation’s finest commodes as well.

Gilmore’s project features 14 women who walk in shifts of seven. Originally the women were only supposed to wear dresses and heels, but the unpredictable weather has forced them to add hot pink sweaters and lavender umbrellas when conditions require. Since they started walking this Monday, the paint on the floor has peeled and the shoes of the women has been scuffed and bloodied.

For Gilmore, the project is about the the meaning of labor and life in the daily grind. “The piece draws attention to, and celebrates, the vast number of women who work each day in the city,” she said in an interview.

But what do the women involved think? We wanted to find out. On Wednesday, we caught up with one of the walkers, Rachel Wiecking, 38, a master’s student in studio art and art history at Purchase College in Westchester County. Here’s an edited interview.

Metropolis: How did you get involved in the project?

Wiecking: Kate Gilmore is the head of the MFA program [at Purchase]. She ended up sending out an email to a bunch of us and asking if any of us would be interested in participating. She sort of told us we would be in heels and it would be a physical difficult performance and that it did pay…$15 an hour, five hours per day. And I wrote back and I said “It sounds great but painful.” And she said, “Oh I don’t mean for it to be painful!” And I thought, Kate, we’re going to be walking for five hours in heels! [But] I immediately wanted to do it. There’s something exciting about putting your body in a situation where you know it’s not going to be about your intellect. And I really like Kate’s work a lot. So I signed up.

M: How did you prepare?

W: I figured out if we walk two to three miles an hour, we would have walked about 15 miles a day in heels. So I’m behaving a bit like an amateur athlete. Read More »